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a little Kant
----- Original Message -----
From: Carolyn Kunin
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2004 8:48 AM
Subject: a little Kant
Volume 13, Number 1 · July 10, 1969
Letter
INVENTIONS
By Martin Gardner,
In response to Happy Families (May 22, 1969)
To the Editors:
NYR readers may be amused to know more about why Nabokov, as pointed out in Matthew Hodgart's excellent review of ADA (May 22), refers to me on p. 542 of his novel as an "invented philosopher." In my Ambidextrous Universe (Basic Books, 1964), in a section on Kant's approach to space and time, I quote two lines from Pale Fire. (Nabokov's page citation is to the British Penguin Press edition; he will find his lines rendered in Russian on p. 159 of a Russian paperback translation.) I did not mention Nabokov but credited the poem instead to his invented poet, John Shade. Nabokov returns the joke by calling me "invented," since my book appeared on Terra, a perhaps imaginary earth, whereas the action of ADA occurs on Anti-Terra, an earth of antimatter.
(Nabokov's novel exploits the familiar science-fiction concept of "parallel worlds" first used so entertainingly by H. G. Wells in his greatest Utopia novel, Men Like Gods.)
----- Original Message -----
From: Carolyn Kunin
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2004 8:48 AM
Subject: a little Kant
Volume 13, Number 1 · July 10, 1969
Letter
INVENTIONS
By Martin Gardner,
In response to Happy Families (May 22, 1969)
To the Editors:
NYR readers may be amused to know more about why Nabokov, as pointed out in Matthew Hodgart's excellent review of ADA (May 22), refers to me on p. 542 of his novel as an "invented philosopher." In my Ambidextrous Universe (Basic Books, 1964), in a section on Kant's approach to space and time, I quote two lines from Pale Fire. (Nabokov's page citation is to the British Penguin Press edition; he will find his lines rendered in Russian on p. 159 of a Russian paperback translation.) I did not mention Nabokov but credited the poem instead to his invented poet, John Shade. Nabokov returns the joke by calling me "invented," since my book appeared on Terra, a perhaps imaginary earth, whereas the action of ADA occurs on Anti-Terra, an earth of antimatter.
(Nabokov's novel exploits the familiar science-fiction concept of "parallel worlds" first used so entertainingly by H. G. Wells in his greatest Utopia novel, Men Like Gods.)